Real Life(55)

Ask for what you want, Miller said. It makes sense to Wallace now. It’s his way of asking. He can’t just say what he wants. Because he doesn’t know what he wants.

“Wallace. Don’t start with me,” Miller says. “You won’t like it.”

“I’m not,” Wallace says, but he’s already humming inside. He can barely contain the warm, rushing sensation inside him. “I’m not starting anything.” This feels essential somehow, that he say this to Miller, though he suspects that he is. He puts his lips against Miller’s neck, and breathes. He feels Miller swallow. The heat of his skin. The rhythm of the muscles rising and falling. The softness of his hair against Wallace’s nose. The fur of some tender animal. The skin pimples under his breath. The shiver of life. He sinks his teeth against Miller’s neck and shuts his eyes against the white jolt of being shoved back and pinned against the floor. Miller is sitting on top of him. His hands are pinned above his head, in which swims his brain, a yolky mess. This too feels necessary. Miller leans low over him.

“I told you not to start with me,” Miller says, but his voice is shaky, uncertain. Something catches in it. Wallace’s head aches, pulsates. “I told you.”

“I didn’t,” Wallace says. Miller is straining against himself, fighting something. Wallace has never witnessed this part of him, though now that he’s close enough he thinks he may have caught glimpses of it. There was that time in their first year, when Wallace had accidentally let the door to the ice machine snap shut just as Miller was reaching in to fill his bucket. It had been a true accident, a minor miracle of bad timing and misread intentions. Wallace was scooping out some ice, door propped on his hip, when Miller came jogging up and said something to him just as he was looking away, and Wallace had let the door swing shut and it almost cut Miller’s hand off. Miller stood there stunned, staring down at his hand as if it had been cleaved clean off. Wallace was terrified. Then, slowly, their eyes met, and Wallace saw that Miller had every intention of punching right through his face. He watched the fingers curl. He watched the fist rise with slow solemnity, like a head bowing in prayer. But then something changed. Instead of him, Miller threw his punch at the slanted door of the ice machine and let out a curse. Goddammit, Wallace, he said. Then he kicked the machine. You are so fucking selfish. Another time, one lunchtime in second year, they were sitting in twos on a maze of stone walls—Miller and Yngve, Cole and Wallace, Lukas and Emma—when Miller and Yngve started to fight about something. It looked like a playful skirmish, but then, after some moment of pride bruised, Miller suddenly pushed Yngve, hard, and Yngve went flailing back off the wall onto the concrete below. For a moment Miller sat there looking at him, his posture rigid, head high, as if he were proud. And then, quick as anything, he jumped down after Yngve, and the rest of them came running after. Yngve was all right. He went home with a concussion that day. And Lukas stayed with him. Wallace wondered if that may have been the start of things between those two. Now, in the kitchen, Wallace is not surprised to find himself pinned by Miller. He’s not shocked. This is something he’s been after, isn’t it? Why else goad him? Wallace lifts his knee until it’s against Miller’s chest.

“Why are you pressing me, Wallace?”

“I don’t know,” Wallace says. “So you’ll tell me to leave, I guess.”

“I won’t,” Miller says.

“Not even after all that?”

“It barely hurt. You’re a baby.”

This stings Wallace’s pride, a pride he did not know he possessed until this very moment. With some embarrassment he realizes that he thought himself capable of dealing Miller harm. Didn’t he hurt Miller by telling him all that stuff about himself? Isn’t that why he did this here, to bring Miller’s anger upon him? Because he thought himself capable of doing harm, of taking something from Miller? And to be told now that he was nothing more than a baby.

“Tell me about your damage,” Wallace says.

“You don’t need to know my damage.”

“I think you want me to know,” Wallace says. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You want me to know about it.”

He shifts under Miller. His back hurts. His head hurts. The world is still uneven, jagged. Like bits of a mirror fit unevenly together. Miller is kaleidoscopic in gray and black and silver, his face a shadowy hall of mirrors, a riot of shapes.

“I hurt someone, Wallace. Really fucking bad,” Miller says.

Wallace breathes through the dull shock of the words.

“My parents sent me away, after. Some kind of camp, I guess it was. But that kid—his heart stopped. That’s what people said, back home, anyway. His heart stopped three times in the ambulance.”

“Wait, Miller . . . Why?”

“I don’t know—it’s like that, I think. With trauma, arrhythmias. His brain bled where I hit him. He had deficits for a long time.”

“No,” Wallace says. “I meant—that’s not what I meant.”

Miller retreats. Wallace follows. Miller stands. Wallace stands. He takes Miller’s elbow, tries to get him to turn.

“Why did you do that to him?”

Miller’s eyes are sad and downcast. He turns from Wallace. Knocks into the glass. Cold water on their feet. On the floor. The glass cracks, but doesn’t break.